condensed from the "BD Now!" Internet Mailing List on 6/2/98
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Let me clarify something about the term "Spiritual":
Spirituality is so misunderstood today that folks are likely
to think I'm talking about some church or religion. Far from it.
I'm talking about things that are insubstantial and that don't
fit into the thinking that "all we can know is the measurable
things of the five senses -- sight, sound, taste, touch and smell."
Everything else has been called (since Kant's day) imponderable.
That's more bull. Why can't we ponder it?
Why can't we know the aesthetic, the joyful, one's life
purpose or dream, or anything else insubstantial? Who says there
is no life force permeating the states of matter and resulting
in such things as waking and sleep, growth and decay?
What's the deal that we have to think of the universe as
some vast machine set in motion to act as pins, levers, balls
and passages, where each substance activates another substance
so that ever so subtle things like thoughts and desires arise
from this?
Why can't we come at this puzzle from the other end and
see how the most subtle things influence gross events? Seems to
me that, especially when it comes to explaining such puzzles as
memories of past lives, out of body experiences, telepathy, premonitions,
and prophecy, that materialism is the most wildly improbable of
all philosophies.